Tag: hiv aids

What Uganda Should Be Worrying About

At the same time Uganda is threatening to make consensual same-sex relations punishable by death or life in prison, the nation is facing a jump in the rate of HIV infections. The Ugandan Parliament website reported today on a Ministry of Health briefing which disclosed that the HIV rate has increased to 7.3% in 2011 from 6.4% in 2004.

Given the rush to enact a law depriving gays of life and liberty, one might think that the driver of this increase is homosexuality. However, that is not the case. According to the article, married couples are driving the chamges.

Dr.Musinguzi warned that the HIV/AIDS rates that had gone down in the 1990s have now shot up and require urgent redress. The new statistics point at Women bearing the biggest burden of the disease with 55% of the new infections discovered amongst women.

The research attributes the trend to multiple sexual partners as the key driver to the spread of the disease. 80% of the men interviewed by health experts accepted leaving with concurrent multiple sexual partners while 68% of the women lived the same lifestyle.

The Speaker of Parliament Rt.Hon. Rebecca Kadaga who officiated at the opening of the dialogue re-echoed the need to lay new strategies to reverse the HIV/AIDS trend.

“Although a number of achievements have been made in the fight against AIDS, the epidemic seems to have shifted from single young persons to those married and in long term relationships. I am also concerned that the rich women are now more vulnerable to HIV than others. This is a worrying trend,” the Speaker noted.

Gays are a negligible aspect of the HIV picture in Uganda but the Parliament is wasting time debating homosexuality. The MPs should be spending their time worrying about the sexual behavior of straights. It is beyond belief that the Ugandan Parliament is risking donor funding over the Anti-Homosexuality Bill when the more immediate issue for HIV is infidelity among straights in long term relationships.

 

 

 

Bryan Fischer responds to Rick and Kay Warren over AIDS-HIV link

In a column hosted on the American Family Association website, Bryan Fischer defended his denial of the HIV-AIDS link. On Monday, Rick and Kay Warren released a statement to me which condemned Fischer’s recent campaign to support the work of Peter Duesberg. Duesberg is a professor of biology at UC – Berkeley who claims that HIV is a harmless virus and does not cause AIDS.

In his rebuttal, Fischer restates arguments from his previous columns and at times, inadvertently argues against himself. For instance, Fischer chides the Warrens with Uganda as an illustration:

Warren knows for a fact that the only nation in Africa that has been able to dramatically reduce its AIDS rate is Uganda, which has done it by emphasizing abstinence before marriage and fidelity after. It makes perfect sense. If the cause is bad behavior, the cure is good behavior. Pastor Warren ought to be down with that, since that’s exactly what the Scriptures teach.

If you want to solve the AIDS crisis, the solution is simple, and it’s not found in a test tube. If you’re a man, stop using poppers, stop having sex with other men, and don’t shoot up. The beauty of that solution is that it doesn’t require billions and billions of dollars.

First of all, Uganda has reduced the AIDS rate by reducing HIV transmission among straights. According Harvard AIDS prevention expert, Edward Green, gays have a very small impact on the situation there. The ABC approach (abstinence, be faithful, condom use) has been quite helpful there, but this is not what Fischer suggests in his very next paragraph. Instead, Fischer’s advice to men in Uganda — “stop using poppers, stop having sex with other men and don’t shoot up” — would be nearly meaningless. Fischer and Duesberg’s Stop, Stop and Don’t Shoot won’t stop HIV but the ABC method does.

What Fischer does not do is confront the horrendous consequences of his campaign already realized in South Africa. As the Warrens pointed out, the South African government took Duesberg’s advice from 2000-2005 which led to thousands of babies being infected and over 330,000 deaths, as estimated by two follow up studies.

Yesterday, I wrote the AFA’s Tim Wildmon to ask if the AFA agrees with Fischer’s views. No reply has come as yet.

Related:

Rick and Kay Warren condemn the American Family Association’s denial of link between HIV and AIDS

Buturo censors human rights documentary

In Uganda, Nsaba Buturo is serving out his term as Minister of Ethics and Integrity. He lost his bid for re-election and will presumably not be back in that role. However, even as a lame duck, he is making waves. According to the Monitor:

Human rights defenders yesterday gathered in Kampala to voice their distress following Monday’s incident where Ethics minister blocked the viewing of a movie chronicling their experiences.

Led by Uganda Human Rights Commission (UHRC) chairperson Medi Kaggwa, the rights defenders in a joint statement said Mr Nsaba Buturo’s move was unconstitutional.

“The documentary was one of the series of activities aligned in commemoration of the International Human Rights Day on December 10 and its aim was to highlight the work of Human Rights Defenders and the challenges they face,” read the statement delivered by Mr. Kaggwa.

In Uganda, the UHRC spearheaded the activities to mark the day in partnership with the UN Office of the Higher Commissioner for Human Rights, the Human Rights Network –Uganda, the Human Rights Centre and other organisations who work as rights defenders.

But while justifying his action, Mr Buturo said the organisers wanted to indoctrinate the youth on homosexuality.

Mr Buturo told Daily Monitor that the organisers refused to delete the homosexual content in the documentary.

The article then describes the nature of the censored content.

Mr Kaggwa said the film only contains interviews of human rights defenders on their experiences and challenges in performing their work as well as recommendations for promotion of human rights especially among the minority groups such as women and people with disabilities.

In the documentary that was shown to journalists at UHRC headquarters, Mr Kikonyogo Kivumbi comments on the rights of the homosexuals to health services and cites the Anti-Homosexuality Bill that allows medical practitioners to report gay patients to police.

“We are giving a very strong voice to Parliament not to pass the Bill because it will discriminate against minority groups like the homosexuals. Uganda is committed to fighting HIV and Aids and when minorities are threatened with arrest, they will fear to go for medication and yet it is their right,” Mr Kivumbi says in the documentary.

This is what seems to have aroused Mr Buturo’s disquiet in the documentary, leading to blocking of its viewing at the National Theatre.  Mr Buturo was not available for comment yesterday as his known mobile number remained unanswered.

If true, this would be more indication that the purpose of the AHB and other initiatives in Uganda is not to protect children, as proponents of the AHB claim, but to punish and eliminate an unpopular minority. There really is little doubt of this despite the claims of defenders.

Uganda: The HIV and AIDS Prevention and Control Bill: Full Text

The HIV and AIDS Prevention and Control Bill, 2010 was published in the Uganda Gazette on April 30 in advance of the first reading yesterday.

HIV and AIDS Prevention and Control Bill, 2010